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Goodbye Jesus

You Can't Just "Believe" This Stuff


L.B.

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Someone in my life told me that my problems and my lack of progress in dealing with those problems are the work of "the enemy", namely, the "devil".

 

I told her I don't believe there's an invisible spook trying to curse me or mess up my life.

 

She backed off and said, "OK, let's not look at this from that perspective".

 

I call bullshit.

 

You can't "un-say" things like, "there's an invisible bad guy trying to cause you trouble and keep you from fulfilling the will of an invisible deity who lives in the sky".

 

I mean, you can say you're willing to allow someone the freedom to believe whatever they want, but if YOU have decided that your belief vis-a-vis the magical Sky Daddy is the correct way to understand things, then it doesn't matter what I think or what anyone else thinks, now, does it?

 

The problem here is not the emotional neglect and abuse I suffered for years that caused (and still causes) major anxiety and self-loathing and self-sabotage in nearly every area of my life. No, the problem is not the abuse I suffered and the stupid, self-destructive things I've done to medicate and fool myself into thinking that I could drink or eat or fantasize the hurt away.

 

Goodness, no; the problem here is that there are INVISIBLE MEN WHO LIVE IN THE SKY SOMEWHERE - THEY COME DOWN HERE AND MESS WITH PEOPLE'S MINDS AND SCREW UP OUR WORLD. Yeah, that must be it.

 

This is the problem I'm facing - no matter what I choose to do with my life, my beliefs (or lack thereof) or my journey to emotional and mental well-being, I am going to be in very, very close quarters with a person who believes against ANY evidence (except when something coincidentally works to 'prove' their worldview) that the source of my issues is spiritual - a battle in the heavenlies between the good spooks and the bad ones.

 

See, I can believe that there is a purple gorilla living in the tree in front of my neighbor's house, and that said purple gorilla eats clouds and shits jelly-beans. Fine; whatever.

 

As soon as I tell someone ELSE that their problems stem from their LACK of perspective, and that they need to accept the works of the bean-shitting purple gorilla, we have a problem.

 

We have a problem because, first, there's no damned way to prove that this pastel primate which eats vapor and defecates candies even exists.

 

We have a problem, further, because now, no matter WHAT other reason someone gives for their successes or failures, my BELIEF in this magical gorilla beats every bit of logic and reason that would explain people's circumstances in any other fashion.

 

In this person's mind, if I continue to have the issues I have, it's going to be, at least in very large part, due to my resistance to the "truth" that there's a Bad Guy chasing me around and interfering with my "true purpose", which must be to obey the Invisible Sky Man. No, not the bad one; the GOOD one.

 

They've told me that they do not expect me to believe what they do - but they tried telling me their beliefs precisely because they wanted me to think the same way they do about these issues.

 

We're at an impasse; this person's mind is made up - their belief in their god and the requisite "devil" means that they KNOW what my problems REALLY are - and thus CAN'T really be trusted to want what's best for me... can they?

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The answer to your final question is "no".

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What's interesting about these kinds of exchanges is how [insert religion] - centric they are and how the promoter isn't conscious of how their assertion fails when stacked against any other religion.

It's similar to how people from a country tout how great theirs is compared to all others.

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